Slopes with their sparse green bushes and the black

asphalt of the freeway funnel me southward

so that I slide into a space between:

I’m on the road, in transit, transitory,

an atom moving with the other atoms.

Enclosure and exposure. Air is big

above me, clouds are moored up there

like great flat-bottomed barges. The smooth road

rises and falls, curves round, and then

on the horizon there’s that line of hills

inscribed against the pallor of the sky.

I’m not a Chinese sage on Thatch-Hut Mountain

but in my hidden heart I’m bowing now

before these things, before this passing world.